Finding my direction...

Another day, another blog post. And a new title as well. Decided that the name 'It's a kind of normal...' had a cool ring to it, so that is the name of my blog for now. I guess every new blog takes a while to get up & going, and find a direction. My direction at the moment is to document 2011, and how I make it the best year for me yet.

 

As of right now, the only concrete plan I have in making it the best year yet is to lose 30 pounds. Gosh, that's a scarily large number. But it's highly possible. And if I get determined I will lose those pounds and hopefully not find them again. So starting from tomorrow, I will be in more of a routine, so I'm going to be attempting to go for either a walk, swim or gym session 3 times a week, on top of my weekly horse riding lesson and Tuesday night sports night. So that will be at least 5 exercise sessions a week. I will also be attempting to eat healthier, as in cutting way-way-way back on chocolate, and other crappy food, and attempting to eat more of the good food. It will help that I'm on work experience for the next 12 weeks so I won't be near a shop, and there won't be lots of food around me making me hungry, so I won't have any choice on what I eat for lunch, I'll have the food I took with me that day.

 

Other than the direction I've mentioned above, I just want this blog to document me, my life and the random, fun things I get up to. I might put in a book review or film review or two. I'll probably talk about music & songs I'm listening to, as well as [hopefully] dates that I've been on in my fun life as a single woman!

 

So if you stumble upon my blog today, please bare with me while I work at [hopefully] making this blog in to an interesting, witty, fun place to be.

Quick post...

I'm still alive J just wanted to post this so that I will have something posted, I'm in the middle of college exams right now, great time to try and start a blog and keep updating it, but once Friday is over, I am going to actually make an effort to keep a blog!

Here’s to the best year yet...

I realise my first post was a week ago, and I haven't posted since, but I do plan on posting regularly in 2011. I also plan on figuring out how to post pictures to my blog when I'm posting from MS word.

So, I had a great night last night, I rang in the New Year with some of my very good friends. I didn't get to ring it in with the very nice guy I met through internet dating during the week. I saw him two days this week and it was all going really well, we felt totally comfortable together, and we were sending text messages constantly, but since Thursday he seems to have grown distant. Now I don't know if I'm just panicking because I really like him, but I am worried he's lost interest. It's always the same when I like a guy so much, I always seem to end up being hurt. Hopefully it's just that he's had a lot going on since Christmas day (house got flooded, car broken...etc. etc.) and I have a lot going on with college exams for the next two weeks, so I'm hoping once things are a bit more settled for both of us, that maybe things will work out.

Either way, I'm determined to make 2011 my best year yet. I am going to be positive, and that will lead to me being happy. I also plan on losing two stone, posting to my blog regularly, and a few other things. First and foremost though, my goal is to do well in my exams, which are starting Tuesday, and which I'm finding it very hard to study for...woops! Oh well, I have the exam answers prepared for most of the exams, just have to go back over & over them. And at least I have a day in between most of my exams.

So I'm off to 'study' i.e. figure out how to post pictures from MSword on to the blog, because my first entry had lots of pictures, but none of them posted to the blog!

My first post...went a little like this...

Hi there world, this is my first [of hopefully] many blog posts. A little bit about me, I'm Marie, or mariebeth. As of today, I am 27 years old, living in Ireland, a college student & single. Well those are some of the labels that could be attached to me.

I'm also a horse rider: 

Well, once a week when I go for lessons anyway! The guy in the picture is called Monty, he's one of the riding school horses that I ride. Haven't ridden him in a couple of months though since he decided to have a hissy fit during a lesson and basically he bucked, I stayed on, he kept bucking & I stayed on for two laps of the arena before I decided to jump off. Fun times...fun times!



I'm also a dog lover:



That's Betsy, our 12 year old Golden Retriever, in the snow last winter. We've had even worse snow this winter. It's actually abnormal how much snow there has been.

And that is Penny, our 4 year old Golden Labrador.



They are two of the sweetest dogs you will ever, ever come across! And no, I am not biased!



I live at home, with my mum & dad. I'm the youngest of 4 children, and yes, I am a little spoilt! We live in a house that has been in my dad's side of the family since the 1700s, which I think is pretty damn cool. My dad is a retired farmer, so I must admit I am the country type :) although, we live pretty close to a city, so I do think that I have the best of both worlds.



What am I doing in college? I'm currently in the second year of a degree in Early Childhood Studies, basically I'm learning all about how young children develop and learn, and the best ways to teach them. I'm not too sure what I want to do after I finish yet, but at the end of January I'm starting a 12-week work placement in a local special needs school, and hopefully that might give me a bit more direction. You would hope that I would have some direction at 27 wouldn't you?



As for the single life, well I broke up with my boyfriend of 18months at the beginning of November, two days before my birthday. D'oh...great timing, it meant I lost out on a present! Well to be fair, it would have been horrible to accept a present from him when my feelings had changed. As of today, I am single, but I do have a serious case of the likes for a guy that I got talking to on Thursday. I got talking to him on an internet dating website, which is a first for me, but we swapped numbers, and have been sending each other texts non-stop since Thursday. There's actually a very real spark there, and I'm so impatient because I want to meet him NOW! I just really hope that there will be a spark in real life. I totally didn't expect to get talking to someone that I would have such a spark with, but well, that's life isn't it?



Anyway, I think that's enough of a post for now, but I'm going to leave you with one last picture, and that's of me:






It was taken in August, on a nice, relatively warm day for Ireland!

Til my next post, mariebeth xoxo